Thursday, August 25, 2011

Dandelion Wine

On Bradbury's 91st birthday (Monday of this week), it was officially announced that a deal has been completed for the production of a feature film adaptation of Bradbury's 1957 novel Dandelion Wine.

The producers of the new venture are Mike Medavoy, whose credits include Shutter Island and Black Swan, and Doug McKay.

Many times on this blog I have cautioned about getting too excited over announcements of film deals, since the vast majority of film projects (in Hollywood at least) end up going nowhere. In the case of Bradbury adaptations we have already seen announced versions of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man disappear from the radar.

What may make Dandelion Wine different is that the writer-director attached to the project is Rodion Nahapetov, who has a definite commitment to Bradbury's work. In fact, as a student in 1972 he directed a short film based around the Dandelion Wine character of Helen Bentley.

You can read more about the feature announcement here. Nahapetov's connection to Bradbury, and the development of the screenplay for Dandelion Wine is discussed on his website here.

And if you click here, you can view Nahapetov's Dandelion Wine short in its entirety. In Russian, of course!